I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

Google's Islam-Baiting Video Censorship: A Well-Meaning Mistake

A scene from "Innocence of Muslims." Under other circumstances, the badness of this green-screen technology would be pretty funny.

The line between responsibility and censorship can be hard to make out at times. Google just tripped over it.

The decision to block access on YouTube to an inflammatory movie trailer in countries where it has already incited deadly riots was obviously made with the best of intentions. It’s hard to fault anyone for prioritizing actual human lives above abstract principles, even principles as important as freedom of speech and the free flow of information.

Censoring the video for a limited period of time and in a limited region no doubt looked like a common sense way to balance competing interests. It’s reminiscent of the compromise Twitter struck for dealing with legal takedown orders in foreign jurisdictions, which my colleague Kashmir Hill applauded as “doing censorship right.”

Even the staunchest of free-speech defenders recognize the difficulty of the dilemma Google faced. Kevin Bankston of the Center for Democracy and Technology told the Times he fears that Google inadvertently just told the world “that if you violently object to speech you disagree with, you can get it censored,” but still thinks the call it made is “kind of hard to second guess.” Eva Galperin of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, on the other hand, calls the decision “disappointing” and says, “I’m not sure they did the right thing.”

I’m pretty sure they didn’t. The problem is that for Google’s calculation to work, its actions need to be effective in dampening the violence. So far that hasn’t happened, and no wonder. More often than not, banning a piece of political speech is the surest way to amplify its power, especially when it’s speech that lacks much intrinsic power of its own.

The “Innocence of Muslims” trailer definitely falls into that category. Without seeing it, it would be hard to get a sense of just how amateurish and silly it is. It’s nasty, but it’s self-evidently not the work of powerful forces of any kind.

Anyone who watches even a couple minutes of it must realize that. I’m guessing most of the rioters in Cairo and Benghazi haven’t actually seen it, and thanks to Google they won’t have that chance. Instead, they’ll imagine something much more sinister and threatening than the reality.

I’m not saying Google’s actions are making things worse. I am saying there’s scant reason to think they’re making it better, and in the absence of such justification, it ought to err always on the side of upholding freedom of expression. That’s real common sense.

Update: Gawker’s John Cook raises a good point that deserves to be addressed (and that I did address in a Twitter back-and-forth with him): Google/YouTube isn’t censoring this video per se, just exercising its own right to decide what kinds of content it will and won’t distribute.

I think the reason this is a potential source for concern is that Google, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms are subject to pressure from would-be censors all the time in the forms of governments and corporations. Having clear principles they consistently abide by is the best defense against that sort of pressure. That way, when they do falter and yield inappropriately to a censorship request — as Twitter did during an ill-advised attempt to please a business partner during the Olympics — it will be immediately obvious to all and self-corrective mechanisms can kick in.

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Then again, maybe keeping the amateurish, offensive video available for fervent and poorly educated Muslims to view would incite further violence. Frankly, you’re just offering conjecture.

Furthermore, you seem to be confusing Google’s goal of keeping their youtube demographics happy and a free country’s goal of maintaining the rights of free expression. Can’t see Nazi propaganda on www.youtube.de…

Sure, it’s conjecture. That’s all Google had to go on as well. I’m not sure why you say “poorly educated Muslims.” Most people in the Middle East know what a Hollywood movie looks and sounds like. You don’t need to have gone to college for that.

“Most people in the Middle East know what a Hollywood movie looks and sounds like.” No, they don’t. College? Most of the rioters are illiterate. Literacy rates in many of these countries are only 50% and often not even that.

“A movie I haven’t seen made me do it.” Even a high quality movie isn’t an excuse to murder someone … hopefully we all know that.

Poverty, oppression of half the population (women), lack of education, knowing how to shoot but not read, and a general lack of opportunity are all bigger factors in these events than any movie. Anyone living under these conditions is going to resort to violence in the name of just about anything. These events have nothing to do with religion or movies.

Joe, have you been to Cairo? I have and I can tell you the availability of Western entertainment there, whether it’s from satellite TV or pirated DVDs, is pretty high. You don’t need to know how to read to watch a movie.

There are not any Muslin countries that allow free speech, especially when it comes to their religion. It would be difficult for them to understand, and handle the responsibilities that go along with the privilege of free speech. You have to give it to others to be able to enjoy the benefits yourself. It does give one pause when the response is always death to ______________fill in the blank. I have never understood the fragile concept when applied to the Prophet. I would think he would be so above any petty labels of any mortal. Supreme beings really don’t have to prove anything, it will be because it is, no help needed.

Censorship is good if it can save lives. Google must understand that the lives in Egypt or middle east are as precious as in America. It seems anything and everything against the faith of Islam is fair game.

First of all this type of video should NOT have been released to start with. Freedom of speech is being stretched to its exreme limit. STOP releasing such disgusting videos

I just forced myself to watch the entirety of this idiotic video. I can’t find any interesting reason it deserves airtime; it’s rhetorically stupid, artistically uninspired, intellectually insipid, and doesn’t even offer the basic production values of someone in a beginner film class. Of course the filmmaker has a free speech right to make it, but that doesn’t obligate Google or anyone else to offer the space for it to be shown. News outlets make these same kinds of decisions every day: what gets in and what doesn’t. Just because someone says something incendiary doesn’t make it newsworthy. Just because this film exists doesn’t make it worth web real estate. Google should pull it not as an act of censorship, but as a statement of the founders’ ethical principle “Don’t be evil.” According to the company’s own website, “…it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.” This is respect? Google has no obligation, legal or ethical, to host the video. Google is not a news institution that has to weigh what information to put out to the public on a topic headlining the news (as newspapers did during the 2005 controversy over the Muslim cartoons), to help people understand the context of it. The honorable thing here would be to take down the video out of respect for the dead, refuse to let the company be associated with something that is causing such pain in the world without even raising serious or interesting questions (unlike Lolita, or the Piss Christ, or any number of other highly controversial and painful-to-many-people works of art). Google could even make its own video pulling tape from this “film” and quoting various people on the topic of why or why not pull the video, showing just enough of it to demonstrate its general tenor. Let the filmmaker buy his own url.

How this has turned to a referendum on one idiot filmmaker is beyond demented, though on the opposite side of the spectrum as shocking. The filmmaker is as much responsible for the deaths as MSNBC, HuffingtonPost, Salon, NYT, Law & Order and the rest of Hollywood is responsible for the deaths of the thousands of Muslims who have died at the hands of Christians for the media’s bigoted, lying propaganda about Christians that goes on every, single DAY. (What’s that? Exactly ZERO have been killed at the hands of Chrstians??!? That’s not the Zionist, teabagging, Islamophobic Christians I know. ZERO??? Are you sure? Nope, don’t believe it for a sec.)

I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion, but it is virtually impossible to separate the topics. It is the inevitable yea-well-what-about-600-years-ago-in-the-Crusades that hurts the Left and gives so many a bad name and zero credibility. It is the HEIGHT of irresponsibility to play that game. Further, it is one thing if there was a reasoned, rational argument one could make about the dangers of Christian extremism. Of course, it is an absolute fact that there are extremists and outliers on all sides, but judge people and groups by their ACTIONS.

I want to conduct a little thought-experiment. Replace said attacked group in following stories and links with Islam/Muslims/etc: http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/br0nc0s/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?search=persecution&IncludeBlogs=1&limit=20. If a cartoon in Denmark leads to rioting and deaths, while an irrelevant filmmaker with a 14-minute YouTube clip leads to countless more riots, and a handful more deaths, can you imagine what the repercussions of even ONE of these atrocities committed on the innocent lives of Muslims would be?

There are facts, and then there is propaganda. The “hate speech” of the film is nothing…noooothing in comparison to the kind of bigoted propaganda spread in the Middle East about Jews and Christians on a regular basis…and without controversy. The regular attacks on non-Muslim groups around the world is non-news after all—worthy of only an AP or Reuters bit buried in every relevant media outlet nationwide, lucky to even get a five-second blurb on CNN or Fox. The “hate speech” of the film is more in line with the bigoted propaganda fomented against Right-wingers and Christians by said media outlets (MSNBC, Huffpo, etc.) on a daily basis.

It says something doesn’t it, the fact that every single group of all shapes, sizes and dogmas can unceasingly demonize, mock, vilify Christians (the mass, mass majority if the numbers are to be believed) here in America with absolutely ZERO (literally zero….not even a verbal one) fear of repercussion or retaliation. Whereas this immunity is quite literally an unfathomable dream by Christians and all minorities on other side of the world. The lack of reciprocity doesn’t even register with our Western minds; the fact that so many of you are doubting my claims proves it. So what comes of the Leftists’ argument then? Well, “We cannot judge,” right? Funny how the side of “tolerance,” “open-mindedness” and “not judging” is the very antithesis in nature and action (there’s that word again, “action”).

All great points Mr. Bercovici. You even went out of your way to add an update an opposing views—which, of course, so many other writers and outlets are notoriously loath to do.

How this has turned to a referendum on one idiot filmmaker is beyond demented, though on the opposite side of the spectrum as shocking. The filmmaker is as much responsible for the deaths as MSNBC, HuffingtonPost, Salon, NYT, Law & Order and the rest of Hollywood is responsible for the deaths of the thousands of Muslims who have died at the hands of Christians for the media’s bigoted, lying propaganda about Christians that goes on every, single DAY. (What’s that? Exactly ZERO have been killed at the hands of Chrstians??!? That’s not the Zionist, teabagging, Islamophobic Christians I know. ZERO??? Are you sure? Nope, don’t believe it for a sec.)

I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion, but it is virtually impossible to separate the topics. It is the inevitable yea-well-what-about-600-years-ago-in-the-Crusades that hurts the Left and gives so many a bad name and zero credibility. It is the HEIGHT of irresponsibility to play that game. Further, it is one thing if there was a reasoned, rational argument one could make about the dangers of Christian extremism. Of course, it is an absolute fact that there are extremists and outliers on all sides, but judge people and groups by their ACTIONS.

I want to conduct a little thought-experiment. Replace said attacked group in following stories and links with Islam/Muslims/etc: http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/br0nc0s/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?search=persecution&IncludeBlogs=1&limit=20. If a cartoon in Denmark leads to rioting and deaths, while an irrelevant filmmaker with a 14-minute YouTube clip leads to countless more riots, and a handful more deaths, can you imagine what the repercussions of even ONE of these atrocities committed on the innocent lives of Muslims would be?

There are facts, and then there is propaganda. The “hate speech” of the film is nothing…noooothing in comparison to the kind of bigoted propaganda spread in the Middle East about Jews and Christians on a regular basis…and without controversy. The regular attacks on non-Muslim groups around the world is non-news after all—worthy of only an AP or Reuters bit buried in every relevant media outlet nationwide, lucky to even get a five-second blurb on CNN or Fox. The “hate speech” of the film is more in line with the bigoted propaganda fomented against Right-wingers and Christians by said media outlets (MSNBC, Huffpo, etc.) on a daily basis.

It says something doesn’t it, the fact that every single group of all shapes, sizes and dogmas can unceasingly demonize, mock, vilify Christians (the mass, mass majority if the numbers are to be believed) here in America with absolutely ZERO (literally zero….not even a verbal one) fear of repercussion or retaliation. Whereas this immunity is quite literally an unfathomable dream by Christians and all minorities on other side of the world. The lack of reciprocity doesn’t even register with our Western minds; the fact that so many of you are doubting my claims proves it.

the media has given these people a world stage so how about just ignoring these people and do other news that is more important than watching the same people that stone their women to death for a shear stupid idea of being without some dumb stupie veil or blowing up women and children because they don’t believe the way they do. Just take away their stage . these people belong in the stone age so why bother with them.

Valid points Al. It is not quite that simple however. Atrocities are committed in the name of Islam seemingly every day, and they have been going on for years. However, the media here (and Europe, I’ll presume) pay virtually zero mind—good for a few sentences by the AP and Reuters to summarily be buried in every media outlet of note, and lucky to get a five-second blurb on CNN or Fox. Seeing the destruction a 14-minute clip on YouTube can do, what would be the fallout of ACTUAL violence? What would be the fallout of even ONE of these stories, with Christians acting as victimizers, and not victims? http://www.jihadwatch.org/muslim-persecution-of-christians/

Google decides on Youtube about what is good and bad. Videos are removed every single day. For some reason this video was not removed but it should of been removed considering there is already very heavy censorship on Youtube. It would of been easy to do.